Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough
*****
To flip back and forth between the years 1886 to 7075 you need either a time-machine or Alan Ayckbourn's dramatic instinct. This wonderful chronological caper has both.
Ayckbourn seems to have been toying with theatrical time since theatrical time began, of course: plays such as Time of My Life and Communicating Doors treat the time-space continuum like a great, cosmic snakes and ladders board devised for the author's own entertainment. As for simultaneous occurrences in separate situations, Ayckbourn has been doing those since the Norman Conquests, right up to the recent House and Garden.
A fully-fledged Ayckbournian time-machine musical is something to savour, then - but as with many of his most imaginatively freewheeling ideas, it's far too clever to be wasted on grown-ups.
Whenever is Ayckbourn's first co-written collaboration with composer Denis King (whose name you may not recognise but whose Novello Award-winning theme for the television series Black Beauty you could well). Ayckbourn has always enjoyed shuffling his theatrical cards, but this one truly defies catagorisation. It's something of a historical-futuristic-farcical grown-up romantic musical adventure for children, and even that sells it a bit short. Above all it is an effortless demonstration that theatre can take you anywhere, particularly in the presence of children, who have far fewer inhibitions about where they might be going.
Whenever trades in the kind of complexity that will have the Harry Potter generation sagely explaining the significance of it all to their parents and teachers on the way out of the theatre. Yet for all this it still retains the clarity of a fairy tale: Good Uncle Martin has invented a time-machine and Wicked Uncle Lucas wants to get his hands on it, so nine-year-old Emily - winningly portrayed by Alison Pargeter - must journey to the end of time to ensure that evil does not prevail.
She picks up three travelling companions from various eras along the way: a chipper cockney, a sensitive android and a friendly Yeti, who unobtrusively assume the roles of Emily's own Scarecrow, Tin-Man and Cowardly Lion. The whole ensemble is excellent, but perhaps Gavin Lee stands out as Oscar, the ARP warden, because he contributes the splendid pearly-king choreography as well.
There will be no finer family entertainment this Christmas - this could take bookings up to the 71st century.
Until January 6. Box office: 01723 370541.
